From Envisioning Futures for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta
10. Conclusions and
Recommendations
“The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise
and thinking that having problems is a problem.”
Theodore Rubin
Conclusions
This report has five major conclusions:
1. The current management of the Delta is unsustainable for almost all
stakeholders.
2. Recent improvement in the understanding of the Delta environment
allows for more sustainable and innovative management.
3. Most users of Delta services have considerable ability to adapt
economically to risk and change.
4. Several promising alternatives exist to current Delta management.
5. Significant political decisions will be needed to make major changes in
the Delta.
We summarize each of these conclusions below and then offer some
additional thoughts and recommendations.
Unsustainable Delta: Getting Worse Together
As we saw in Chapter 3, the Delta’s future is unsustainable in its
current form. Some key drivers of change in the Delta are largely beyond
the control of stakeholders and policymakers. For example, climate
warming is expected to contribute to sea level rise and to increased winter
flows into the Delta, raising the likelihood of extreme flood events and
levee failure. The increasing likelihood of a large earthquake affecting the
Delta compounds this risk. Invasive species are posing increasing risks
to the survival of key native species. Some invasive species, such as the
Brazilian waterweed and the mitten crab, also pose growing risks to water
supply. Furthermore, continued human population growth in California
203
will raise the pressure on the Delta’s land and water resources for recreation,
housing, and water supply.
Other key drivers of change are more amenable to human intervention
but only with major policy shifts. Land subsidence—compounding
risk for levee failure—will continue with current farming practices. The
accumulated effects of a century of land subsidence can only be reversed
slowly. Urbanization in and around the Delta dramatically raises the
potential damage from levee failure. It also poses a threat to the Delta’s
wildlife, by removing habitat. Contaminants from both agricultural and
urban land use both within the Delta and in the upstream watersheds of
the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys are major sources of water quality
problems and concerns. New invasive species will continue to be a major
threat to native species in the Delta, and current policies to prevent their
arrival and limit their expansion are inadequate.
Any of these factors individually would cause great concern about the
future of the Delta. In combination, they make the Delta’s future look
bleak. Given the potentially catastrophic nature of failure, we should
prepare for a soft landing that allows us to accommodate and adapt to
large-scale changes in the Delta, while allowing users of the Delta to
extract themselves from their current untenable situation. The combined
risk of Delta catastrophes for the state and for regions that depend on the
Delta is too important to ignore any longer. Although crisis-response tools
will be important, given the ever-present risk of levee failure, they are not
a substitute for a new long-term solution. A sustained effort is needed
to avoid such crises and their draining effects on the state’s budget and
economy. Without concerted action directed toward long-term solutions,
all interests will be getting worse together.
Improved Understanding of the Delta Ecosystem
The common perception of the Delta as a stable freshwater habitat is
wrong (see Chapters 2 and 4). The Delta is naturally a tidal system that
historically has had salinities, water velocities, water clarity, and other
characteristics that fluctuated widely across years, seasons, and tidal cycles,
particularly in its western portions. Even today the volume of water moved
daily by the tides far exceeds the amount of freshwater inflow, except under
extremely wet conditions. This tidal influence is constantly moving salt
204
water into the Delta. Thus, keeping the western Delta fresh during the dry
summer months and in dry years requires greater reservoir releases to the
Delta. In this way, saltwater intrusion is limited because most water in the
Delta is confined to narrow leveed channels.
Given this artificial water regime, it is not surprising that the Delta’s
ecosystem is also highly altered and that many of its key native species are
in decline, some to crisis levels. Restoring more natural fluctuations in
salinity and other water quality and habitat conditions may be one of the
most important ways to combat the many invasive species in the Delta.
Many of these invaders are best adapted to stable freshwater or saltwater
regimes, not to the fluctuating conditions to which many native species
are adapted. A Delta that is heterogeneous and variable across space and
time is more likely to support native species than is a homogeneously fresh
or brackish Delta. Accepting the vision of a variable Delta, as opposed
to the more commonly held vision of a static Delta, will allow for more
sustainable and innovative management.
Economic Adaptations to a Changing Delta
Changes in the Delta will cause significant costs and some dislocations
(see Chapters 6 and 8). However, most users of Delta services have
considerable ability to adapt economically. As a result, these costs and
dislocations need not be catastrophic for California’s economy or society.
However, these costs and dislocations will be much easier to handle if
they are anticipated and dealt with in a systematic fashion, rather than in
reaction to crises, such as levee failures.
For some, risk-mitigating investments and strategies can considerably
diminish the costs of a catastrophic levee failure. One example is PG&E’s
strategy to increase redundancy of gas transmission lines with a new
underground line in the Delta. Other examples include the plans of
various water exporters to reduce dependency on the Delta by augmenting
local sources and regional interties. For urbanizing Delta lands, strategies
to increase flood protection may be able to reduce flood risk to acceptable
levels (which need to be more realistically defined). Recreational users,
such as duck hunters, are likely to have opportunities to relocate within the
Delta as their current locations flood or otherwise change. In general, the
Delta’s role as a major recreation site will no doubt continue to expand, as
205
the Northern California population grows. But the forms of recreational
activity are likely to change and adapt with changes in the ecosystem and
water management. Farming within the Delta is the economic interest
with the least ability to adapt, because it relies on water and land uses that
are unsustainable in many locations, even with substantial investments in
the levee system. Even so, many farmers will be able to adjust to changes in
water quality through alterations in their crop mix and irrigation practices.
Public policies could help ease the transition away from Delta lands as they
become economically unfarmable. Because they have nowhere else to go,
the most vulnerable users of the Delta are the native species that rely on
it for survival. Unlike human interests, their ability to adjust will depend
entirely on society’s stewardship decisions.
Alternative Management Strategies
Fortunately, the situation is not hopeless. There are promising
alternative futures for the Delta (see Chapters 7 and 8). Some, like those
based on the construction of a peripheral canal, have been proposed in
the past. Others, like the Opportunistic Delta scenario involving only
seasonal exports, are relatively new. No alternative will be ideal from all
perspectives; some alternatives would preclude some current uses of the
Delta entirely. Our analysis suggests that alternatives seeking to maintain
the entire Delta as a freshwater system—along the lines of the current leveecentric policy—are incompatible with giving the Delta’s native species a
fighting chance to survive and prosper. The freshwater alternatives are also
the least responsive to the drivers of change currently acting on the Delta.
Various other alternatives would allow improvements in Delta habitat while
permitting a variety of other beneficial uses.
The key to these alternatives is to use different parts of the Delta
for different purposes. The most promising alternatives we discuss
share similar strategies in this regard. Ecosystem restoration would be
concentrated in the western Delta (where salinity would be allowed to
fluctuate), Suisun Marsh, and the Delta’s northwestern reaches, including
the Cache Slough system and the Yolo Bypass. Agriculture would remain
viable toward the north, east, and south; many of these areas could also
contain urban development behind higher and stronger levees. These
alternatives also provide the ability to continue water exports, either
206
seasonally (Opportunistic or Eco-Delta) or year-round through one of
several aqueduct alternatives (Armored-Island Aqueduct, Peripheral Canal
Plus, or South Delta Restoration Aqueduct). All of these alternatives have
different costs and risks, but each seems preferable to current conditions.
Detailed knowledge, analysis, and discussion will be needed before
identification of a “best” and politically viable alternative can be justified.
In each of these alternatives, some landowners and some water users
would face particularly high adjustment costs, whereas others would
benefit. Public policies would need to ensure that mitigation is available to
distribute the costs equitably and reasonably (see Chapter 9). Mitigation
could take the form of cost sharing for those whose adjustment costs are
particularly high. This might be appropriate, for instance, if western Delta
water users need to construct new pipelines or storage units to allow for
ecosystem-based water quality fluctuations. Mitigation could also include
policies to prevent further subsidence of agricultural lands or to buy out
Delta farmers when their lands are no longer farmable because of flooding
or water quality problems, an inevitable outcome in many of the Delta
alternatives. With the resolution of major Delta policy issues, it would be
easier to establish a more diversified, sustainable, and prosperous economy
and ecosystem in the Delta.
Facing the Tradeoffs
A major change is needed in how Californians think about solutions
to the Delta. The leitmotif of the approach adopted by CALFED was
that “everyone would get better together,” and it was assumed that this
goal could be met by managing the Delta as a single unit, simultaneously
achieving improvements in habitat, levees, water quality, and water supply
reliability within the Delta and for exporters (Chapters 2 and 5). However,
that approach was based on an insufficient appreciation of the risks of levee
instability, an inadequate understanding of the importance of fluctuating
conditions for some key native species, and the expectation of ample federal
and state funding. Going forward, Californians will need to recognize
that the Delta cannot be all things to all people. Tradeoffs are inevitable;
the challenge will be to pursue an approach that yields the best outcomes
overall, accompanied by strategies to reasonably compensate those who lose
207
out. Incremental consensus-based solutions are unlikely to prevent a major
ecological and economic disaster in the Delta.
Scientific and engineering studies and analyses can provide guidance
on the types of alternatives that can meet the broadest range of goals.
However, central to the decisions on a new course for the Delta will be the
viability of funding mechanisms and governance institutions (see Chapter
9). Although CALFED fostered the beneficiary pays principle—whereby
various economic interests were expected to contribute to program costs
in proportion to the benefits they received—the default assumption, more
often than not, was that the general public was the beneficiary. To wit,
the proposed financing programs in 2000 and 2004 both relied heavily on
funds from state and federal coffers. Although the assumption of federal
largesse is now widely dismissed, many still look to the state to provide
the bulk of the funding for Delta management. State general obligation
bonds have funded most CALFED activities to date, and two bonds passed
in November 2006 have allocated some $3 billion to $4 billion for flood
control in the Central Valley and the Delta.
Yet the total initial and ongoing costs of any promising long-term Delta
strategy will greatly exceed the availability of state bond funds, given other
demands on public resources. (In the area of flood protection alone, great
investments are needed to improve the protection of heavily urbanized
areas upstream of the Delta, where the state has greater liability for flood
damages.) For this reason, it will be essential to hammer out ground
rules on funding contributions for both initial and ongoing operational
expenses. The beneficiary pays principle will be especially relevant for any
collective infrastructure investments that improve water supply reliability
and reduce flood risk. The State Water Project was built on this principle.
The financial contributions of water users and land development interests
are likely to determine the most feasible investment choices. User finance
of such investments is essential, given the other demands on public funds,
such as ecosystem restoration. Under most scenarios, expenditures to
purchase and manage lands for ecosystem restoration are likely to be
considerable. Public funds will also be needed to contribute to mitigation
solutions for those users who will lose out in whatever strategy is chosen.
Creating long-term local dependency on state funding is undesirable from
all perspectives, as it represents a great liability and drain on the state’s
208
coffers and provides an unreliable source of revenues beyond the control of
local beneficiaries.
To best manage the tradeoffs in resource management within the
Delta, there is a need for well-coordinated approaches that take into
account not only water but also land use (see Chapter 9). The development
pressures on the Delta are great, and the current institutional fragmentation
in the Delta fosters piecemeal decisionmaking that will compound flood
risks, irreversibly destroy valuable wildlife habitat, and impair water quality.
Improved governance of Delta resources is necessary to protect the value of
the Delta both for the region’s residents and for the broader public interest.
Our analysis also suggests that the environmental community will
need to consider new approaches to foster a healthy long-term future for the
Delta ecosystem (see Chapter 5). The dominant assumption behind many
recent environmental lawsuits—that the Delta’s key problem is export
volumes—may be only partially correct at best. If the various lawsuits now
in play end up mandating reduced exports within the context of a static,
freshwater Delta, the native species that policies are now aiming to protect
are likely to suffer.
Recommendations
Our recommendations for the Delta fall into four categories:
1. Technical explorations of long-term solutions for the Delta are needed
to inform the political process. Politics should not preempt the creative
development, consideration, and comparative evaluation of alternatives.
2. Regional and statewide interests should be more forcefully represented
in Delta land use decisions. These decisions have important
implications for flood control, ecosystem health, and water supply and
quality that extend well beyond the boundaries of Delta cities and
counties. The Delta needs a strong regional permitting authority, along
the lines of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development
Commission or the California Coastal Commission.
3. To fund long-term investments in the Delta, the beneficiary pays
principle needs to be resuscitated. Water users, urbanizing lands, and
infrastructure users should all be expected to pay for investments from
209
which they benefit. Mitigation funds should be used to help ease the
transition for those who will lose out from chosen alternatives.
4. Although it is premature to choose a long-term solution for the Delta
without further technical investigation, Californians can take some
steps now to move forward. To reduce the costs of a catastrophic levee
failure in the Delta, investments in emergency preparedness are needed.
To prepare the way for any long-term solution, discussions are also
needed to implement some “no regrets” policies.
Technical Exploration of Solutions
1. Create a technical track for developing Delta solutions. For the most
part, recent attempts to solve the Delta’s problems have been politically
driven. Under the rubric of “everyone getting better together,”
agencies and other stakeholders sought to negotiate solutions based
on what was politically acceptable. Despite considerable investments
of time and money, this approach has not resulted in an acceptable or
workable solution. Now we are all getting worse together. This failure
has led to calls for solutions, largely derived from past proposals, which
maintain the Delta in its present configuration. Despite improvements
in our understanding of the Delta ecosystem and the economy of
California, little in the way of new solutions has been developed or
proposed. The political track of any Delta solution is important and
necessary, but it can be better informed and seeded with more viable
answers by a technical track that would develop and explore new ideas
and adapt older solutions to current conditions.
2. Establish an institutional framework to support the development
of solutions to the Delta’s problems and to bring scientifically and
economically promising alternatives to the attention of political
authorities. This activity needs to take a long-term view and avoid
crisis-driven responses to short-term political thinking. It should
have some political independence, an appropriately sized budget, the
technical capability to creatively and competently explore and eliminate
alternatives, and the management capability to direct multidisciplinary
research and development. CALFED was supposed to have these
abilities, but its direction, funds, and energy became dissipated in
politics and the effort to please all stakeholders. At the turn of the
210
last century, California’s Debris Commission had a similar problemsolving role (see Chapter 2). In taking a long view, it paved the way
for fundamentally different and more successful flood management in
the Central Valley, leading to the introduction of flood bypasses. The
current technical efforts examining the pelagic organism decline and
the risks to Delta levees focus rather narrowly on specific aspects of the
Delta’s problems, and the current policy efforts—including the Delta
Vision process—currently lack a substantial technical component.
Technical and policy endeavors need some independence within a
larger framework.
3. Launch a problem-solving research and development program.
The science effort regarding the Delta is in need of an overhaul. The
Delta is a multidisciplinary problem, not a single-focus research
topic. Much past research on the Delta and its problems has been
associated with agency data collection or basic agency, academic, and
disciplinary research. Although such efforts have helped improve
our understanding of the Delta, they have not provided an efficient
or effective process to support decisionmaking. A directed problemsolving research and development program aimed primarily at
developing and informing the analysis of promising solutions is
needed (see Chapters 4 and 8). This program would include some
continued basic research, but most effort would be directed toward
developing and evaluating solutions. Ecosystem adaptive management
experiments (supported by quantification and computer modeling),
levee replacement, island land management, flood control, and
integrative system design activities should receive greater attention in a
problem-solving framework.
4. Consider the Delta’s water delivery problems in a broad context. The
foremost physical problem in the Delta needing a physical solution
is delivery of fresh water through or around the Delta because this
water is a key factor driving California’s economic engine. And some
promising solutions exist. Potential options extend beyond a peripheral
canal. Our work suggests that an armored-island aqueduct, a south
Delta restoration canal, opportunistic pumping, and perhaps even
an environmentally reoriented Delta management scheme all show
promise and merit further exploration (see Chapter 8). Any physical
211
solution for water delivery must be accomplished in the broader context
of developing a more sustainable Delta environment.
5. Eliminate some solutions to the Delta’s water delivery problems
from further consideration. To reduce investments in scarce time,
expertise, and resources in evaluating Delta alternatives, some potential
Delta options are not worth further exploration (see Chapter 8).
These include the traditional levee-centric approach, the building
of downstream physical barriers to seawater, the large expansion of
on-stream surface water storage, and the idea of ending all export
pumping. These are physically unreasonable solutions to the Delta’s
water delivery problems, and they perform so poorly in economic and
environmental terms as to be nonviable.
6. Approach the Delta as a diverse and variable system rather than as
a monolith. A diversified and variable Delta by design is likely to
perform better than the freshwater Delta that has been artificially
maintained over the last 60 years. Better solutions are likely to emerge
if the Delta is not treated homogeneously (see Chapter 4). Historically,
the Delta naturally contained diverse habitats that varied across
years, seasons, and tidal cycles in terms of salinity, water residence
time, turbidity, water velocity, elevation, and other physical habitat
conditions. Reintroducing and extending this diversity, by specializing
parts of the Delta for wildlife habitat, agriculture, urban, recreation,
water supply, and other human purposes, seems promising.
Governing and Financing Change
1. Create stronger regional and statewide representation in Delta land
use decisions. Local land use interests in the Delta are well represented
by local cities, counties, water agencies, and reclamation districts, but
these institutions are fragmented. There is little effective representation
of larger regional and statewide interests in Delta land use decisions
(see Chapter 9). An institutional disconnect exists between local land
use planning and the broader public interest—and considerable public
investments—in the Delta.
No current agencies or institutions have broad authority to
oversee land use decisions in the Delta. The existing Delta Protection
Commission, whose role is to foster continued agricultural,
212
recreational, and environmental uses of most Delta lowlands, is a
weak institution without permitting authority. To date, the State
Reclamation Board has taken little interest in the Delta and, under
current policies, focuses only on those issues that either directly affect
federally authorized project levees or increase regional flood stage. The
CALFED Bay-Delta Authority has no direct influence over land use
decisions. State and federal permitting agencies, including DWR,
the Department of Fish and Game, SWRCB, the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Army Corps
of Engineers, have no institutional inclination for regional management
of resources of broad public interest.
The “all politics are local” adage applies well to the Delta, yet
local land use decisions there affect the entire state. A new approach
is needed that, at minimum, provides for significant representation of
state interests from outside the Delta on decisionmaking bodies (such
as the State Reclamation Board or the Delta Protection Commission).
Effective management of the Delta in the interest of the entire state
will require an organization modeled after the California Coastal
Commission or the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development
Commission.
2. Give direct beneficiaries primary responsibility for paying for Delta
solutions (see Chapter 9). Urban development should pay directly
for its own flood protection (including both capital and maintenance
costs) with protection set at appropriately high levels (exceeding 200year average recurrence for concentrated development). It should also
contribute substantially to environmental offsets, given the significant,
irreversible changes it causes. Direct and indirect exporters of water
from the Delta should pay for infrastructure that directly benefits them
and should contribute to ecosystem restoration necessary to offset the
effects of water exports. Other Delta infrastructure providers (roads,
pipelines, power lines, etc.) should be expected to pay for their own
facilities. A ballast water fee or tax should apply to shippers who do not
undertake significant efforts to preclude the introduction of invasive
alien species, and tighter controls should be imposed on horticultural,
aquarium, bait, and other industries that deal with live organisms. It
should be acknowledged that agricultural activities, though principal
213
beneficiaries of many proposed Delta improvements, will not be able to
raise large quantities of funding to address most Delta problems.
Public funds, such as those raised through general obligation
bonds, should be reserved for the truly public components of the
investment program, such as ecosystem restoration and mitigation
for those who lose out as Delta strategies shift. Public funds can
also complement private funds for some investments that have both
private and public goods characteristics, such as some flood control or
environmental water supplies. Failure to develop an effective funding
mechanism is likely to lead to financial catastrophes for state and local
interests in the future, in the wake of natural catastrophes.
Funding and control of water export facilities and operations are
likely to be intertwined. In the past, concerns over control of major
new infrastructure facilities have led to unwillingness to either accept
new facilities or pay for them. One potential alternative is to assign
shares of capacity of new (and perhaps existing) facilities to different
parties with a stake in Delta water quality and water supply (upstream
diverters, in-Delta users, exporters, and environmental agencies) (see
Chapter 9). Under such a system, each party could affect the use of
some infrastructure capacity to protect its interests, but there would
be incentives for improved overall operations (e.g., through water
exchanges and transfers).
3. Establish mitigation and compensation mechanisms to support
the implementation of any alternative. Not everyone will get what
they want or what they have been used to getting from the Delta. In
some cases, providing money or alternative land might compensate
for changing or eliminating uses of water or land that hinder broader
progress (see Chapter 9).
Urgent Items for Policy Debate and Action
1. Make essential emergency preparedness investments. This report
has focused on long-term solutions for the Delta, which will take some
time to put into place. In the short term, it is crucial to take steps to
mitigate the costs of a sudden failure of Delta levees (see Chapter 8).
For all agencies relying on Delta waters, this means developing plans
to ride out an extended export outage. With measures such as regional
214
interties, water sharing agreements, local supply development and
drought contingency plans, the costs of losing a year of Delta exports
can be reduced by a factor of 10 (see Chapter 6). Other infrastructure
providers that rely on the Delta, such as Caltrans, the railroads,
and power companies, need similar contingency plans, and should
consider making new investments in their networks to make them
less susceptible to levee failure. PG&E’s investment in a buried gas
pipeline is a case in point. The continuation of a program for the rapid
repair of critical levees—such as the one launched in 2006—and the
development of emergency flood response plans are also key.
2. Implement a “no regrets” strategy for the Delta (see Chapter 8). First,
given the great urbanization pressures on the Delta, several actions
are needed now to avoid irreversible consequences. These include
establishing an improved regional governance structure, instituting a
program to set aside or purchase key habitat, and creating adequate,
coherent flood control guidelines for urbanizing lands.
Second, because not all Delta islands have the same strategic value,
in terms of either economic assets (including homes and infrastructure)
or water supply, policymakers should develop a “do not resuscitate”
list in the event of levee failure. Making such decisions now could
avoid costly expenditures on islands that are of low strategic value,
while creating opportunities to experiment with a more variable Delta
environment. This list could be coupled with insurance or buy-out
programs for lost farmlands on these islands.
Third, a substantive improvement in the Delta ecosystem,
germane for any long-term Delta solution, could be made with habitat
restoration actions in the Suisun Marsh and Cache Slough regions.
A variety of other “no regrets” actions were started under CALFED,
including groundwater banking, water use efficiency, water marketing,
and environmental water account activities (see Chapter 2). These
actions should be continued, albeit with support predominantly from
water users.
Forging a New Path Forward
The Delta’s many problems have sparked a crisis of confidence on
the part of its many stakeholders. The CALFED process, which has been
215
responsible for crafting solutions in the Delta since the mid-1990s, is now
widely perceived as having failed to meet its objectives. That process was
forged under the urgent threat of a regulatory hammer—a severe cutback in pumping to meet federal water quality standards for the Delta
(see Chapter 2). CALFED’s failure lay in the course chosen for crafting
solutions. Achieving political consensus was favored over making tough
choices among alternatives, and it was assumed that taxpayer largesse would
foot any bill. In the past, major innovations in Delta management have
required dire external pressure—real or threatened—from droughts, floods,
lawsuits, or federal or state government. The question going forward is
whether today’s crisis in the Delta can spur stakeholders and the state to
action with a new strategy that acknowledges the fact that some will gain
and some will lose out as the Delta changes. The future of this unique
ecosystem and regional land resource and of the state’s water supply system
depends on the answer. All Californians are likely to see benefits (and
costs) from a comprehensive long-term solution. Otherwise, we will all see
only costs.
216